As Seen in Vanity Fair's August 2006 Issue!
As Seen in US News & World Report's September 11 Fifth Anniversary Issue!
As Seen in Time Magazine's September 11, 2006 Issue!
As Seen in Phoenix New Times' August 9, 2007 Issue!

Friday, June 23, 2006

More 9/11 "Truth" Movement Deceptions

A few days ago, I asked the conspiracy theorists here to provide an example, any example of how we, or our related sites and resources use lies, misrepresentation, logical fallacies, quote mining, or similar deceptions to make our argument. Thus far, I have received no response other than a disagreement as to whether the 9/11 commission did a good job or not. An arguable topic no doubt, but hardly a scathing indictment of the ethical standards of this blog.

Regarding those same tactics used by the 9/11 truth movement, I can find so many examples, that I have a hard time finding enough time in the day to document all of them. The current scandal of the day, appears to be testimony by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta before the 9/11 Commission, in which he supposedly testified that Dick Cheney had given an order for defenses to be stood down. This theory was most recently put forward by general conspiracy nutjob, and founder of the 9/11 "Scholars" Jim Fetzer, on the FoxNews program Hannity and Colmes:

Colmes: What evidence do you have that the government knew, that Cheney knew, that anyone in the chain of command knew ahead of time that this attack was going to happen on 9/11? Can you give us any piece of evidence that would substantiate that argument?

Fetzer: Absolutely, for example Norman Mineta testified to the 9/11 commission that he observed Dick Cheney in an underground bunker when a young aide came up to him and repeatedly told him, “Sir it’s 50 miles out, sir it’s 30 miles out, sir it’s 10 miles out. Does the order still stand?”

Cheney turned around, jumped on him, nearly bit off his head and said, “Of course the order still stands. Have you heard anything different?”

MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?" Well, at the time I didn't know what all that meant. And --

Not content to merely overdramatize the event, Fetzer then adds his own ominous spin to the testimony:

The order had to be, to not shoot down the plane that was approaching the Pentagon. After all, the order should have been to shoot it down. Shooting it down would be the obvious thing to do, when you consider that you are going to lose the passengers on the plane if you shoot it down, but if you don’t you are going to lose the passengers of the plane, and also the personnel and property at the target.

But what, other than this fervent desire on the part of Fetzer that this be some type of evidence against Cheney, indicates that this order he is referring to is to "not" shoot down the plane?

Absolutely nothing. Once again, we are dealing with conspiracy theory logic, you start with the conclusion, and work backwards to interpret the evidence to fit it.

The obvious question, which has been raised by conspiracy theorists in the comments here, is then why didn't the 9/11 commission follow up on this "smoking gun"? Well, the answer to this is, THEY DID! If you continue into Mineta's testimony, just a few moments later, he continues (emphasis mine):

MR. MINETA: And so I was not aware that that discussion had already taken place. But in listening to the conversation between the young man and the vice president, then at the time I didn't really recognize the significance of that.

And then later I heard of the fact that the airplanes had been scrambled from Langley to come up to DC, but those planes were still about 10 minutes away. And so then, at the time we heard about the airplane that went into Pennsylvania, then I thought, "Oh, my God, did we shoot it down?" And then we had to, with the vice president, go through the Pentagon to check that out.

MR. HAMILTON: Let me see if I understand. The plane that was headed toward the Pentagon and was some miles away, there was an order to shoot that plane down.

MR. MINETA: Well, I don't know that specifically, but I do know that the airplanes were scrambled from Langley or from Norfolk, the Norfolk area. But I did not know about the orders specifically other than listening to that other conversation.

MR. HAMILTON: But there very clearly was an order to shoot commercial aircraft down.

MR. MINETA: Subsequently I found that out.

So once again, not only does the evidence not support the conspiracy theory, IT DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS IT! But through their habit of quote mining, they avoid coming to terms with this? Mineta, who was actually there at the time, thought that this referred to an order by Cheney to shoot a plane down, it was only the conspiracy theorists, in order to get the evidence to fit their conclusions, who subsequently reinterpreted it to mean the exact opposite.

I have asked this numerous times in the past, but I never get a response from the "truthers", if the truth is supposedly on your side, and we are nothing but a bunch of delusional "shills", why is it that you have to constantly lie, distort, and misrepresent evidence? While you can't come up with a single example of us doing that?

Oops, excuse me. Stupid mistake, given that he is testifying on the operations of the public transporation system. I get all those "T"s confused. My apologies to John Snow. I will correct it, thanks for the copyediting.

Cheney didn't have time to give any stand down orders, he was too busy pulling off the attack to give any timely shoot down order :D

But as for your challenge, I stated that you guys use Bin Laden as the main culprit when it is a fact he didn't do it. Everything falls apart after that and is the Achilles heel of this blog and in fact, the entire official fiction.

You've got the right to frame your arguments in any way that you want.

I submit to you that it is the ultimate dishonesty to parse the 9/11 Commission testimony and report, as you are doing here related to Mineta / Cheney, reviewing the testimony as if it is conclusive.

The plain truth is that the 9/11 Commission work was, at the the very least, a travesty of a real investigation. (Just to be clear, as I criticize the 9/11 Commission, I'm certaily not saying that the work of the Commission or lack thereof automatically makes "Loose Change" or other charges made by what you call CT'ers true.) My point is, specifically, that your are being deceptive by protraying the Commission as a reliable way to determine what really happened, as if we should trust, by an appeal to authority, what has been provided by the Commission. In retrospect, an evaluation of the trustworthiness of the Commission points to the exact opposite conclusion.

Futhermore, let me be clear also in saying that the argument can be made that some of the investigation that needed and needs to be done was beyond the Commission's charter. I'm not denying that. In fact, recognition that the Commission ignored or considered "off-limits" huge areas of fact finding and research serves to cast further doubt on any argument that uses the Commission's work as primary source material.

I submit to you that it is the ultimate dishonesty to parse the 9/11 Commission testimony and report, as you are doing here related to Mineta / Cheney, reviewing the testimony as if it is conclusive.

I agree, it is not conclusive. You can not read this testimony and in any way conclude that Dick Cheney gave an order that the plane should not be shot down.

We can honestly disagree on the conclusions, but I ask once again, if this is just a matter of interpretation of evidence, then why are the CTers the ones who have to lie and distort to make their point?

BG, the point is that every CT out there uses quote mining, disinformation, badly framed statistics, misrepresentation, and outright lies in order to sell their version of "the truth".

Nobody here is saying that the 9//1 Comission report or the FEMA and NIST reports are perfect. Maybe there are some gaps. But the plain fact is that they're factual. They present evidence and back up their assertions. You can't take a part of the reports and say "this is wrong", and then properly back up that claim.

So if the CT movement has "the truth", why do you need to resort to all sorts of dirty trick in order to sell it. Any one of us here can sit down and pick apart your argument piece by piece, providing solide evidence to show that you've either made a mistake, or have intentionaly misrepresented the evidence. Whereas the best you can do is complain about the things that the 9/11 report doesn't mention. Why do you think that is? We constantly catch you lying, whereas you can only catch us omitting things you'd like to hear us talk about.

BG, the point is that every CT out there uses quote mining, disinformation, badly framed statistics, misrepresentation, and outright lies in order to sell their version of "the truth".

It only seems that way because that's what you want it to be. Truth is, you guys shut out the truth so as to defend that little construct you have closed yourself off in. Truth hurts in this case and the best way for you guys to cope is to make it seem as those who hold different observations are crazy somehow. This is called cognitive dissonance and is a protection mechanism that flourishes in denial of the facts.

We got videos of them before flying to Boston, and we got passenger manifests. Evidence enough. (And no, moron, they aren't faked.)

Or from now on do we need videos and pictures of every second of a criminal's life?

Okay, they flew to Boston supposedly and then what? When did they get on the actual flights, there must be videos or pictures of the boarding the planes at the various airports on that day. Don't tell me none of these airports have surveillance equipment.

When did they get on the actual flights, there must be videos or pictures of the boarding the planes at the various airports on that day. Don't tell me none of these airports have surveillance equipment.

I live right outside of Boston. My parents both work at Logan (although my dad also has an office at the Tip O'Neill Building). I'm very familiar with how it works. I've never seen a security camera by a ticket agent or at any point boarding or leaving a plane. There are cameras elsewhere, but that video would only prove he was at Logan (which is obvious as he flew from Portland to Boston).

And this is the crew that lied us into a war thats far worse for the US than 9/11 was.

Actually lying is when you know something to be untrue, they acted on faulty intelligence (but supposedly there's documents that state 500 canisters of several chemical weapons have actually been found, but they pre-date the Gulf War).

And you've gotta be smoking something strong to think the Iraq war is worse than 9/11. You must've been born after 9/11 to say something so utterly foolish.

Default, were you aware that Saddam obtained and used those weapons against the enemy of the United States, with the endorsement of the US government? Sorry, but the attack on Iraq was not justified. However, the administration's complete incompetence in making a case against Saddam goes toward the argument that there is simply no way this administration could ever pull off some kind of catastrophic "false flag" terrorist attack.

Eh, we try to stay away from that topic because it really has nothing to do with the CT's, but I'll take the time to quickly address it.

Frankly, the fact that Sadam was in direct violation of the 1991 ceasefire is (legaly speaking) all the justification that is neccesary to re-invade. The Bush administration attempted to add extra weight to their case, and due to incompetence ended up doing the exact opposite. They should have just highlighted the terms of the ceasefire and shown that Iraq was ignoring them for the last 12 years.

And that's all I'm saying on the subject. I have no desire to derail this blog.

And you've gotta be smoking something strong to think the Iraq war is worse than 9/11. You must've been born after 9/11 to say something so utterly foolish.

You think bombing a city with White Phosporous and murdering who knows how many babies and children and people of all ages so that their skin burns and melts unstobbably, and being bombed repeatedly by suicide bombers and living in fear everday not just from that but being killed by death squads that rule you AND american soldiers taking their anger out on you AND TERORISTS FROM IRAN and having a messed up infrastructure so taking a dump is a struggle IS NOT AS BAD AS 3000 PEOPLE DYING QUICKLY IN ONE DAY? Yes there were afer affects like the pulverized asbestos in people's lungs, but hello, were not talking about a perpetual state of chaos in the usa like there is in many parts of Iraq now and being killed with chemical weapons that burn you alive and all those other things I mentioned.

At 24 June, 2006 22:48, default.xbe said...

and even if saddam doesnt have any WMDs now we know he had checmical and biological weapons in the past, hes used them on his own people and on US soldiers on the first gulf war

No we don't know that for a fact, and in fact a former CIA analyst showed that Saddam did not purposely use chemical weapons on the kurds and that it was depleted uranium and experimental vaccinations FROM THE USA that made the soldiers sick. Stop playing expert when you aren't one!

And you've gotta be smoking something strong to think the Iraq war is worse than 9/11. You must've been born after 9/11 to say something so utterly foolish.

You think bombing a city with White Phosporous and murdering who knows how many babies and children and people of all ages so that their skin burns and melts unstobbably, and being bombed repeatedly by suicide bombers and living in fear everday not just from that but being killed by death squads that rule you AND american soldiers taking their anger out on you AND TERORISTS FROM IRAN and having a messed up infrastructure so taking a dump is a struggle IS NOT AS BAD AS 3000 PEOPLE DYING QUICKLY IN ONE DAY? Yes there were afer affects like the pulverized asbestos in people's lungs, but hello, were not talking about a perpetual state of chaos in the usa like there is in many parts of Iraq now and being killed with chemical weapons that burn you alive and all those other things I mentioned.

At 24 June, 2006 22:48, default.xbe said...

and even if saddam doesnt have any WMDs now we know he had checmical and biological weapons in the past, hes used them on his own people and on US soldiers on the first gulf war

No we don't know that for a fact, and in fact a former CIA analyst showed that Saddam did not purposely use chemical weapons on the kurds and that it was depleted uranium and experimental vaccinations FROM THE USA that made the soldiers sick. Stop playing expert when you aren't one!